A century of ufo sightings and Close Encounters in the Midwest

"And we saw what appeared (this was dark now) to be a couple of headlights.  Well, we assumed they were maybe a temperature inversion, but then we got to thinking that during a thunderstorm or rainstorm you're not going to have a temperature inversion.  It's going to be kinda stirred up.  But, directly in line with this was Owensville Road.  We thought maybe they might be headlights bouncing off low clouds.  These (lights) were up in the air.  Our angle of perspective changed as we approached it, so we found out it was above the trees.  The lightning caught up with us about this time and a pretty good sized bolt was behind it and we got it illuminated, all around us, and we saw what appeared to be a 'saucer'. (Exhibit 1D)  Kinda weird but the whole family witnessed it and nothing was said until we got home.

"What surprised me, of course, we thought it was a car because it was the same spectral response that you'd have (received) from headlights.  You know, the infrared region, heavy in the infrared.  As we got closer to it, before the lightning struck, we saw what looked like clearance lights, one on each side of it.  Later on, it proved to be four of whatever the light was, dotted around the cupola.  And beneath it was a super dark cone which apexed below the tree level.  And, this thing (the cone) didn't appear to be solid, the cone that came down to the ground or whatever it went down to.  It was sort of wide at the bottom of the saucer and evidently went to a point which could have been the opposite of a flashlight beam.  And, ah, we kinda got a shock over it.  I'd done a little snooping around during some rainstorms seeing if we could see it again, my oldest boy and I, back in where we thought it was in the woods.

"As you come outside of Mt. Carmel and are proceeding towards Princeton, you'll find a large woods with a bunch of little spots where they're cut out to plant popcorn, I think, and corn.  And it was over one of these patches, in fact, it was the exact location where this Cavanaugh girl was found.

"There is one thing.  We've discussed this.  The family and my oldest boy, he's fifteen now.  This is a good topic for us, inter-family, ah, if these were lights shinning on out, I would think they more outside than in because, if there were anyone inside this thing, they would have been almost blind because the lights, if these were portholes, I'm saying, they would have to be almost blind because the lights were almost the same illumination as car headlights, although we didn't see any beams shooting out from them as you would a car.

"But the cone beneath seemed to be, well, what I'd seen in a laser, except on a much grander scale, in a different light spectrum.  Of course, in a storm you'll have heavy ultraviolet and a, which could have made a red appear black, or any color would be off color.  Maybe there is something here in a beam, you know, like a laser.  I think they (U.S. scientists) are doing experiments with green lasers that actually support objects.  Why not?

"Another little injection here.  It looked archaic, something out of Jules Verne, like a pickled metal, you know what I seen?  When a piece of metal is heat treated, pickled, a burnished silver color?  It looked like this, well you'd almost say you saw the rivets on the damned thing.  Of course, I didn't seen any rivets.  It was old-fashioned looking, not streamlined, (but) straight up and down, the cupola, with a little rolled edge on it.  And ah, nothing ultramodern that you would associate with space travel or something like this.  I don't really believe the damned thing came from outer space (laughing).  I mean, it doesn't seem . . . . .

"Usually there is an explanation but this damned thing, there wasn't any explanation for me (laughing again), you know, it was there, solid.

"The damned thing was sitting awfully still, you know, to be . . . . it moved in from the west, or let's see, east, and then kinda stopped and started down.  And so smooth and determined in its movements.  It wasn't being affected by the storm any.

"I'd say about thirty feed above the tree level, five, six hundred feet away, I'd imagine.  It would estimate it about thirty to forty feet (wide).  Of course, I'm not very good at judging distances or sizes of objects.  I overestimated (driving) because I thought it was landing or going down in a field which was just on the other side of the woods in an open field.  So, I speeded up and went up there, and it went down into the woods.  So I overshot my estimate there.  We slowed down and watched it to almost a stop, I'd say three or four minutes.  All the time we had good lighting from the lightning.  Of course, I'd say it was ultraviolet and this does make the colors . . . . screws up the colors.  It changes the shades heavy ultraviolet.

"I still kinda contend that it's not extraterrestrial.  It just doesn't look like, 'course I don't know what extraterrestrial looks like, let's face it.  But, something, you know, you get a hunch like, 'that sure doesn't look like something from outer space.'

"But the thing that really intrigued me was the cone beneath it, the super dark cone, which wasn't solid, it was a beam or ray.  I hate to say ray because it sounds like something out of Buck Rogers, a beam of some sort.

"Light or nothing passed through it, but the edges of it were fuzzy.  So it was a beam of some sort, like the reverse of a flashlight beam.

"Now the bottom, now I never actually got that much of a view of the bottom of it.  I couldn't tell you anything other than the outside edge, you know, it was saucer shaped, inverted saucer, sloped down from the top.  But as I started to sweep around and get as much visual information as I could, I rejected everything when I saw the beam.  I went right up to it and I guess I studied it maybe too long.

"We hardly said anything coming home.  You could have heard a pin drop all the way home.  So when we got home we all sat down and we all drew a picture of what we saw.  Everybody saw the same thing, which was unusual, I thought.  Even the roll around the top of the cupola, which fascinated me."

The total duration of this sighting was two to five minutes.  The car was heading southeast on Highway 64 at forty miles per hour and it slowed down to five miles per hour.  The car was a 1971 Chevrolet, 4 door, Impala, and the "air conditioning was on, windows closed until I purposely opened them down to observe."

"Realizing at this time it was a UFO, I turned on the radio, but did not hear any interference, nor did the engine stall, as I had read they did.

"At about one thousand feet from the object, it stopped its linear movement and hovered until we were within five hundred feet.  Then, it descended slowly into the woods." (Ref 3)

In 1977, the MUFON Symposium proceedings contained a paper entitled: Future Physics and Antigravity, by William F. Hassel, Ph.D..  On page 65 of the proceedings it states:

"A method of utilizing beams of microwave radiation to effect a reduction in the local gravitational field has been pursued by Niels T. Sorensen.  Dual lobe radiation elements were arranged in circular symmetry so that each beam was oriented toward the APEX of a 90 degree CONE (emphasis ours).  A null region then occurs at the APEX of the CONE, which represents a region of apparent gravitational attraction."

The Princeton report is, in a sense, observational evidence of the Sorensen effect identified above.  Reference New Technologies Related to UFOs and Their Origins by Mr. Sorensen.  It is taken from THESIS/SYNTHESIS/ANTITHESIS, a joint symposium sponsored by the Los Angeles and Orange County sections of the AIAA and the Los Angeles Chapter of the World Futures Society, Saturday, September 27, 1975.  The object described on page 63 of the MUFON Symposium proceedings bears a VERY STRONG resemblance to the UFO observed in the August 1973 sighting listed above.  The drawing down by the witness in this sighting appears to resemble an alleged photograph I have.  The source and any other details concerning the photograph are not known.

On an unknown date also in August 1973, the Skylab III crew photographed a strange red object in earth orbit on the 59th day of the flight.  The object was not more than thirty to fifty nautical miles from Skylab.  It rotated for several minutes before disappearing.

A CE2 sighting occurred at Giles, Tennessee where two witnesses reported seeing an egg shaped object with a brilliant light on top that disappeared behind a nearby tree.  Imprints in the ground were found. (Ref 9)

At 7:17 PM an unseen shape with red and white lights hovered, jumped, and made low altitude passes over the city of Connersville, Indiana.  Some witnesses said that they saw a circular object.  The police received more than one hundred phone calls.

At 7:30 PM a three minute close encounter sighting was reported by five witness to have occurred at Laurel, Indiana.  The object made a sound like a hive of bees as it hovered over the little town at tree top level and jiggled up and down and sideways.  It was described by the witnesses as two saucers placed together rim to rim with a cabin on top with the bottom of the craft trisected with a circle in each section.  A truck driver blew his air horn and the object took off over the trees at fantastic speed. (Ref 7)

An unconfirmed radar track near Huntington at Fort Wayne, Indiana was reported.

At 10:30 PM a CE3 sighting occurred at Berea, Tennessee.  Awakened by barking dogs, James Cline and his family who lived on a farm saw lights from a UFO in the woods.  Mr. Cline saw a "being" with a glowing white head cross the road about fifty feet away.  Tracks were later found in the road.  Landing marks twenty-two feet long and twelve feet wide where the UFO had been were also found. (Ref 8)

At 11:30 PM east of Connersville, Indiana the 'fish shaped craft' was reported to have appeared over a field.  The home of the female witness is located near where the object was seen.  She remembers the beautiful exterior lights, sound, and its occupants when she suddenly found herself inside it!  She was under the control of a four foot tall being.  She noticed that there were eight to ten other people on board with her.  He sister, who was standing beside her and a young daughter, also saw the people.  Later, she found herself back in her yard watching the strange people walking away. (Ref 7)

After the school program, the woman and her son and some friends went back to watch and saw several lights; one a red glowing object in the west.  They allegedly saw small red light fall from the bottom of a larger red light and then they "went in all directions."  They moved at fantastic speeds.  The woman could not recall hearing any sounds from the object.  He reported hearing "a slight humming or whining noise" as the "ship just floated across the top of the trees."  The object, at this time, was about 400 yards down the road away from the witnesses.  The object crossed the road and went over a hill out of sight.

The closest that the object got to the witnesses was three hundred to five hundred feet.  The female witness estimated that the abject was about thirty feet above the ground.  Her son estimated seventy-five yards.

October 17, 1973:  At 4:40 PM two boys at Princeton, Indiana saw an airborne object shaped like a "fish." (Ref 12)

October 18, 1973:  AT 11:30 PM at Mt. Vernon, Indiana a woman who lived about eight miles from me on Ford Road who had gone to bed at about 10:30 PM reported that she was disturbed by a strange noise which she described as sounding like "a barge on the river."  After two or three minutes of hearing the sound, she decided to go outside and find out what was making the sound.  Her home is in the flight pattern of a great deal of air traffic to and from Dress Regional Airport in Evansville so she is familiar with the noises of a lot of different aircraft, including the noise of helicopters.  In fact, the Evansville VOR (VHF Omni-Range) station, an aircraft navigational aid, is located just south of her home on Ford Road.

She reported that she saw an object in the direction of her garage and to the south.  The object was merely an outline produced by as many as fifty white lights which were not evenly spaced.  The object, if that is the correct description, didn't appear to have any body.  At least no body was observed.  However, it had a red flashing light on the rear.  The pattern of lights was described as "long and narrow, about three times as long as it was wide", moving very slowly on an east to west heading.

She observed the long, side view for about three minutes.  Directly in front of her house the mass of lights turned to the south heading toward the Ohio River and she was able to see the end view.  Rather than being round, the end section was more of a rectangular shape like a squared off cigar.  At this time the object was very low and the witness says that she should have been able to discern metal if metal was there as it went past a tree.

After a total observations time of about five minutes, the object disappeared.  Dogs which were present did not bark. The control tower at Dress Regional Airport stated that there were no aircraft being tracked in that area.

At 11:00 PM near Mansfield, Ohio a CE2 sighting occurred.  An Army Reserve helicopter with a crew of four men encountered a gray, metallic looking, cigar shaped object with unusual lights and maneuvers as they flying between Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio.

First seen as an innocent red light at a distance in the southeast, in matter of a few minutes the object became a potential threat.  The light turned toward the helicopter and appeared to be on a converging flight path.  Captain Lawrence Coyne verified his crewman's assessment, grabbed the controls from the helicopter pilot, and put the UH-1H helicopter into a powered descent of approximately five hundred feet per minute.  Almost simultaneously Coyne established radio contact with Mansfield control tower ten miles to the northwest.  Coyne thought that the light was an Air National Guard F-100 aircraft from Mansfield.

The red light continued its radial bearing and increased greatly in intensity.  Coyne increase the rate of descent of the helicopter to two thousand feet per minute and his airspeed to one hundred knots.  The last altitude he noted was 1,700 feet.

Just as collision seemed imminent the unknown light halted in its westward course and assumed a hovering relationship with the helicopter above and in front of it.  For ten to twelve seconds the cigar shaped, slightly domed object nearly filled the front windshield. (Exhibit 5C)  A featureless, gray, metallic looking structure was precisely delineated against the background stars.  The object had several lights on it; the most conspicuous of which was a green pyramid shaped beam that looked like a directional spotlight which became visible.  The beam entered the windshield enveloping the cockpit in green light.  After about ten seconds of hovering the object began to accelerate toward the west.  It then executed a forty-five degree turn to the right and headed toward Lake Erie and appeared to "snap over" the horizon.  The object was visible for a total of about five minutes.

The magnetic compass in the helicopter was rotating approximately four times per minute and the helicopter altimeter read approximately 3,500 feet.  A one thousand feet per minute climb was in progress.  Coyne insists that the collective on the helicopter was still lowered from when he had put the helicopter into an evasive descent.  The helicopter, however, instead of going down was going up! (Ref 13)

Thanks to Jennie Zeidman the NSID lists eight other sightings in Ohio that night.  These sightings confirm that something truly unusual was in the skies over Ohio near where Captain Coyne and his crew encounter the UFO.  One sighting involved witnesses in a car who observed the UFO, the light beam, and the helicopter.

October 19, 1973:  At 8:35 PM over Ohio a private aircraft with two observers aboard reported sighting a UFO and they picked it up on the aircraft radar. (Ref 14)

At about 9:00 PM at Goshen, Indiana a man out raccoon hunting with his dogs came on a dimly lit object on tripod legs about three hundred feet away.  The object was saucer shaped with a dome about 75 to 100 feet wide.  Three humanoids of normal size were seen moving about the object.  According to the witness the dogs were "carrying on something fierce".  After about three minutes of observation the figures climbed a ladder under the center of the object, which took off vertically. (Ref 8)

The train had gone through Mt. Vernon and was nearing the Lamont crossing about two miles east of the city heading west to Evansville.  The sun was just barely peaking over the tree tops.  The two men in the front engine saw a bright but distant light in the sky coming from the north.  At first they thought it was an aircraft, the later decided that it couldn't be.  The object was tracking north to south and was pulsating form very bright to dim and back to bright.  The distant light appeared to travel a short distance, approximately fifty to sixty feet, between pulsations.  The light finally turned to a more easterly direction and disappeared.

When the train neared Caborn which is six to seven miles east of Mt. Vernon, the conductor told the crew in the rear of the train that they had seen a very bright light.  When the train neared St. Phillips, the rear conductor, Mr. "C", said that there was a train following them.  By then the train had made it up Belknap Hill at Peerless Crossing; is a long pull for a train, and had stalled out.  The rear conductor said, "Well, there's a train back there and he's been following us for awhile."  Mr. "P" replied, "Well, I haven't heard him on the radio."  Mr. "C" then suggested that they get the other train to push them.  Mr. "P" again told him that he hadn't heard anything on the radio.  Mr. "C" reportedly then stated something to the effect that "Well, he's been following us and I can see his light back there and the 'board's' red!"

The object following them had given them a "red signal" on their blocking system.  The signal referred to here is a series of colored lights similar in color to regular traffic lights, situated on a pole on the side of the tracks.  The blocking system lights show either red, green, or amber meaning danger, all clear, or caution respectively.  The light system is part of the automatic blocking system which tells each conductor of other traffic on the same track.  The "red board" comment normally means that something was on the track behind them.  A quick check with the train yard master revealed that there was no train behind them at all.  Upon receiving this news, Mr. "C" reportedly replied, "There is a headlight behind us.  I can see it.  It's real bright."

After the train stalled out the crew got off the train at Belknap Hill.  Mr. "P", after re-boarding the train backed it down the hill and got out and walked down to the rear unit and pressed the reset button.  To his surprise the unit "kicked right off; ran real good."  The light or object was moving off, back from where it came from.  According to Mr. "P", whatever had given them a "red board" now was giving them a "green board."  As he stated, "The 'board' went green.  The light (object) cleared up the board."

The train, previously hampered by a bad rear unit and way over weight, was now fully capable of climbing the steep hill and of making it to Howell without further mishap.

On the same morning a woman from Russell Springs, Kentucky saw two, three foot tall beings in her carport.  The beings walked around the side of the house and entered a craft sitting on the ground which then rose over the house and disappeared. (Ref 8)

At 10:40 PM a possible close encounter occurred at Bufkin, Indiana; a few miles northeast of Mt. Vernon. A blue and green light which moved up and down and back and forth with an associated humming noise was reported.

Seventeen minutes later, at 10:37 PM, Police Chief Wilfred Clark and Officer John Tucker had just concluded their pursuit of a drunken driver.  While waiting for a wrecker to arrive to tow away the vehicle, they observed a strange looking orange light in the southwest that reacted to their flashlight.  The flashlight seemed to cause the object to become brighter and to get closer.  After about a minute and a half, they shined the squad car spotlight on it and it immediately moved away and out of sight. (Ref 3)  These lights are now referred to as "OBOL" for Orange Ball of Light.

There was no CE activity in December, 1973.

References

1.  EGBA Listing.

The Year of the Humanoids actually began late in the UFO wave of 1973 but reports written at the time generally attribute the Year of the Humanoids to 1974. Actually, it was quiet in my particular area of interest in the early part of 1974.

In February, 1974, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Evanston, Illinois printed its first newsletter. J. Allen Hynek, the former UFO consultant to Project Blue Book, was the director of CUFOS. CUFOS later relocated to Chicago, Illinois.

At this time, there were CE1 and CE2 sightings being reported all over the U.S. The CE3 sightings where humanoids are observed were, however, getting all the attention.

The original sighting report was investigated by FI Don Worley who related the incident to me. In later years the case was investigated by Mike Christol.

The sighting involved a local man and six other witnesses who, at the time of the sighting, were working for a vacuum cleaner sales company and were returning home on Highway 57 after selling vacuum sweepers. The moon had just come up and was on the horizon at the time. An object appeared about 300 feet away and 100 feet above the ground. As the object moved over the car and hovered the main witness rolled down the window of the station wagon. He reported that the object gave off heat. One of the witnesses was a female and she reported that she became very sick. One by one all the persons in the car passed out except for the main witness. He reported that there was a cloud around the car. He also reported that a dead tree outside the car was observed later to be below him as if he were actually moving upward. Then, he passed out.

The beings were described by the witnesses as about five feet tall, of light skin with big ,almond shaped eyes and small lower jaw. They were reported as being very strong.

The main witness reported having been abducted several times

May 24, 1974: At 2:42 AM, the sensor in the MADAR system briefly picked up something unusual. (MADAR Anomaly No. 5)

June 16, 1974: An abduction was reported to have occurred at sometime around midnight at Metcalf, Illinois. The investigators were Don Worley, Michael Palmiter, and myself.

Mike Fox, 18 years old, had been out that night and returned home about 10:30 PM. He parked his Dodge Challenger outside the house in a small driveway. He then went into the house, "messed around about a half-an-hour to an hour, had something to eat, and then went to bed. The weather was hot." He said that he left open the door to the house.

His bed was situated such that he could look through the bedroom doorway, through the utility room, and see the big back doorway of the house. The back door itself was open but the outside screen door was closed.

"I was laying in bed. I heard a little disturbance on the front porch. It sounded like a dog kickin'. We did have four dogs at that time. They're always in a ruckus. All of a sudden I saw three big headed 'things' coming around the side of the house, stepping up on the porch, opening the door up just about a foot, enough to squeeze through coming into that utility room where the washing machine and dryer was at, stopping right in front of that before they entered my bedroom doorway, about three foot, standing in there gazing at me. I remember my reactions at the time, 'what the hell have I done?' I thought they were some kind of demons or ghosts or something. I had no idea what they were. And then, they came in my bedroom."

They came near to the right side and at the foot of his bed. All three of them stood there, "just looking me right square in the face. They looked at me, and then they all looked at each other, and then began to 'pogo' or bob up and down, just like they got some kind of incredible excitement." They, then, stopped this movement.

The bed covers were on the end of the bed and he quickly pulled them up over himself. Two of the entities then moved forward, grabbed the blanket and pulled it down. The other being moved ahead toward the doorway and the other two grabbed him and took him. When they took hold of his hand he said he felt like he was numb all over. "It might have been fear or it might have been something they did." He described his feeling as "creepy, almost like a haunting feeling."

"They took me outside and (we walked) one in the front, one on each side, by the hand, went around the corner of the side of the house, and there was this other man standing there by the side of the house. The three that had come in the house looked almost identical, but the one standing outside didn't. He had the same features and everything and was just about the same height but his face was rougher. (Apparently this was an older alien, one of the wise ones and not a worker). What I mean by rougher, it seemed like it was more wrinkled and it seemed like it had a kind of a molten look, like someone had put plaster on his face with a putty knife, a kind of tough exterior. And he was the only one who did all the communicating. (He said), 'If you cooperate, you will not be harmed', in a telepathic way. He was in the front.

"I knew what the scuffling noise was. The dogs seemed to be 'knocked out', fast asleep. The knocked them out some way. We had one dog that was quite ferocious at the time. They went across the yard by the machine shed, not quickly, but pretty slowly."

The beings holding on to him reportedly tended to walk. The others appeared to hop. "It wasn't a tight grip, but a fairly loose grip, cold and clammy." The two apparently wrapped one of their hands around each of his hands, but not like a hand shake.

"We went out across the bean field and I seen this doggone 'thing' sitting there. I don't remember it very well because, at that time, I was beginning to get hysterical. But they didn't give a damn about that at all." Then, some kind of gas formed and they went inside the ship. Possibly the gas was used to kill germs. The door to the ship was very narrow and sort of pyramid shaped. When he got inside he reportedly saw a great big circular room which emitted a white light. "You couldn't tell where it was coming from. There was this table or cot or whatever you want to call it on one side, and there was this magnificent instrument panel on the other side, with two chairs. There were these lights that kept blinking on and off and they were in squares. They were all different colors. They kept blinking on and off, like a computer board. There were no levers, no nothing."

The witness insists that he wasn't mishandled by the aliens. There appeared to be only telepathic communication and only with the one who he thought was the older one. The older one, more or less, told him to sit down on the couch or whatever it was.

First, they took a sample of his hair. They took the sample from the left side of his head toward the back. Then, they began to do some annoying things. The older alien took a long, silver, pencil like instrument and stuck it in his mouth and began to look at his teeth. "And all the time the other three were just standing there observing, like they were learning something. Then, he stuck it down my throat and gagged me. The, he pulled it out. He didn't seem to have any emotion in it at all, the one that was doing it. The other three tended to be very curious of what I was going to do, and how I was going to react to this. It was just like a teacher teaching students. That's the way I took it.

"Then, all of a sudden, he instructed me to lay down flat on my back. Well, I began to balk a little bit then. I began to get a threat from his suggesting that, 'You are nothing to us, you will cooperate, or we will harm you in a physical way.' So, I laid down on my back. They pulled down my underwear shorts and I felt something prick my penis, like a pin would, real sharply, you know, real quick. They, they very quickly pulled my shorts back up. Then, they instructed me to turn over. And somehow, they took a picture, some way, which flashed on the wall in front of me of my internal organs in my chest and back, my ribs, my spinal cord. I could see two lungs and my heart. That didn't last too long, and then they took and pulled down my shorts again, and this time I really got outraged. The next thing I knew he was telling me, 'If don't let them do this, we could sooner cut off part of your hand or fingers (one said).' Then, he stuck some kind of probe in my rectum. Then, the other three began to get very excited, like they were queer, you know what I mean? They began the pogo-ing, jumping up and down, like they did earlier.

"I was thinking the whole gosh-damned time, 'If I could get my hands on you, I'd choke you, I'd kill every damned one of you.'" He wished he had a gun or a club. His heart was beating fast. He was sweating profusely. The probe seemed like it was in there about ten minutes. They removed it, pulled his pants back up, and told him to get up. "Two them grabbed ahold of me again, the very same two that grabbed ahold of me in the bedroom, went out the door. The other two stayed behind. I remember going back to the house. I remember getting a good feeling then 'cause I thought 'this damned nightmare is over with.' They took me to the back door. That's as far as they took me. I remember stumbling to my bed, some way, in some kind of a daze." He passed out and woke up the next morning not remembering anything about that night. He did remember that his father had seen a UFO, a big glowing fireball, lift out of the field about a hundred feet and shoot off to the southwest at tremendous speed.

A male neighbor, two days later, met his father at a grain elevator. Both were farmers. The neighbor told the witness' father that he saw something land in the field around midnight. The witness' father saw the object leave at dawn; approximately 4:30 AM.

The neighbor is now deceased and his family has moved away.

The witness himself does not know when this event took place or how long it lasted. He reports that he had a great deal of sinus, ear, and nose problems after the incident. (Ref 5)

July 30, 1974: At 8:50 PM a sighting occurred near Solitude, Indiana. Later that evening I received a phone call from the local County Sheriff, Bill Cox. Sheriff Cox told me that a well known and respected local couple had just encountered a UFO.

I alerted the local FIs; Byron Koenig and Greg Bachert, and all three of us departed in separate cars to see if anything of interest was still occurring. We were all somewhat tense about what had been reported.

Each vehicle had a CB radio. We all watched the skies looking for the reported object and talking together as we drove. We didn't see anything in the sky but, on our trip back, all three vehicles experienced a loss of CB radio communications. We never figured out why we could not communicate that evening. We were only separated by about a quarter mile on the highway but we could not communicate on the radios.

As usual the first interrogation of the main witness to this sighting took place over the telephone. The witness said that at 8:50 PM, near Solitude, Indiana, which is about three miles north of Mt. Vernon, Indiana, they and their little boy were returning home by car to Mt. Vernon after attending a play in New Harmony, Indiana. They were traveling south on Highway 69 when they observed an object silhouetted against the moonlit haze that was hanging in the southwest. Although a couple of miles away, the object had a clear cigar shape with three steady white lights on it. They continued down the highway and, as they topped a small hill, the object began to descend appearing to get larger and larger all the time. When they reached the bottom of the hill they slowed down. The object appeared to be hovering approximately a hundred yards from them. The object was moving very slowly. "It acted like it was on water or something. It was just floatin' like." It now had four lights on it; two on each end. The now shadowy object was long and slender; "kinda cigar shaped." (Exhibit 1D)

The sighting duration was seven to ten minutes. The UFO did not activate the MADAR alarm even though it was very close to the MADAR location. It was not detected on radar, either. I was told by the radar people that an object that low was below the radar beam and would not have been detected.

A few days later, I met the witnesses, completed the forms, and filed the report.

August 15, 1974: MADAR was triggered at 12:19 AM. One of the MADAR recorders almost immediately picked up a clap of thunder. A very close lightning strike caused it to go in to alarm.

September 3, 1974: At 9:35 PM MADAR anomaly No. 7 occurred. There were no close sightings that were reported; however, a MADAR event recorder showed background radiation levels rose to 86% above normal.

In almost every instance of MADAR activation, the radar at Dress Regional airport was not in service at the time of the alarm.

There were three of us; two FIs whose names will be kept confidential, and myself. We were on skywatch after several nights of people calling in with reports of seeing what later turned out to be a jet airliner with a new FAA lighting system. We hadn't yet heard about the new FAA lighting system and we wanted to see the thing for ourselves.

Our skywatch location was about a mile north of town. It was our best spot for clear sky observation even though it was at a cemetery. What appeared to be the flashing lights of a police, fire, or EMT vehicle in the dark came towards us from the west about a quarter mile away. The flashing lights then turned south on Highway 62 and headed toward Mt. Vernon. Later, a voice on the CB radio told us that he had seen a civil defense fire truck at 8:15 and 8:30 PM. We never inquired where the CB radio user was located or asked if the vehicles he had seen had their lights flashing. When we checked with the police dispatcher we found that, in fact, there had been a fire that night, but for some reason we didn't bother to check in to it any further to determine the location of the fire or when it occurred.

None of us remembers seeing automobile headlights. We all saw just a bunch of red, blue, and white flashing lights similar to those on EMT vehicles. The mystery surfaced when we checked where the lights came from before turning south on the highway. There was no road intersecting with Highway 62 at that point. The lights would have had to pass low over a cornfield in order to move the way that they did. (Ref 5)

A pilot with three and one half years of experience was flying an Aeronca Champ, aircraft number N82198, from DeKalb to Mendota, Illinois. It was bright daylight with visibility limited to six to seven miles by haze. The pilot was flying at an altitude of 2,500 feet on a compass heading of 240 degrees.

As the aircraft passed over the small town of Shabonna, the pilot was checking his position on the aeronautical chart that he held on his lap in order to determine if he was still on course for his destination of Mendota. When he looked up from the map he noticed with amazement that the magnetic compass was rotating counter clockwise at four to five rpm. He then looked to his right and saw nothing but the town of Shabonna below him. When he looked to his left, however, he saw an object flying parallel to him at the same speed of 75 to 80 mph and at the same altitude. The object was pacing him at 120 degrees at an estimated quarter mile distance.

He described the object as being shaped like a disc or ellipse. If the distance between the observer and the object is accurate, the object would have been 120 feet long and 30 feet thick. It appeared to be a solid object, white or dull silver in color, without any openings or protrusions. There may have been a depression on the top of the object but the angle necessary to view the top only occurred for a brief second as the object departed.

After pacing the aircraft for eight to ten seconds, the object tipped slightly and the pilot saw that it was actually round and not an ellipse. As it tipped up at an angle it accelerated toward the east at a fantastic speed and was gone.

The radio in the aircraft was not on at the time of the sighting so there was no radio interference observed. MUFON was not able to get a radar confirmation of the object from Chicago Center. (Ref 7)

Three young men left Darmstadt, Illinois, traveling west in a car on a trip to New Athens, Illinois. At 11:30 PM a bright light illuminated the area around their car. The object causing the illumination was a twenty to thirty foot, disc shaped object that was descending into their field of view. The object had red and yellow rotating lights around the lower edge of its rim.

Apparently trying to land, the object was about 1,000 feet from the road and descended to about fifty feet above the trees when the witnesses lost it from view due to obstructions. They never saw the object again that night.

Later, the trio parked their car at an intersection facing north with Darmstadt Road running east and west in front of the parked vehicle. At 4:30 AM, in the northeast a light appeared that moved around and projected beams downward as it began to descend. It was about a mile away from the witnesses and about fifty feet above the treetops. The beams continually broke up and never seemed to reach the ground.

The driver started the car and headed west on Route 13. The pie shaped object changed course and followed the car at about a 1/2 mile distance. As the car neared the Route 13 and Darmstadt Road intersection, the object appeared to stop and hover over a long cylindrical object that was on the ground. The witnesses estimated the object on the ground to be at least fifty feet long and five to seven feet in diameter. This object had a pulsating orange light on its front and a green light in the rear. When the car reached the road intersection the witnesses lost sight of it.

A great deal more information on this sighting is contained in MUFON Journal No. 90. (Ref 9)

An 82 year old woman noticed a bright light shining in her bedroom window. She looked outside and saw a "boat shaped" or oblong object hovering over a neighbor's house. The UFO, fifty to sixty feet wide, had green and white lights around the lower part and seemed to be rotating. A white light shone from three or four square windows around the upper portion (see the Blyton drawing, October 16, 1973, exhibit 2C) where two small dark humanoid figures could be seen to be moving back and forth in "cramped positions" continually gesticulating (or, moving levers) with their arms. The beings, who ignored the witness, were visible only from the waist up.

The object, rising and falling slightly, hovered over the nearby church for nearly half an hour. It then moved horizontally for a short distance and shot upward at high speed. (Ref 8)

References

1. Situation Red, UFO Siege, page 118.